When Iris Ellmann set up the Wine Barn, an importing business specialising in German wine, 20 years ago, she didn’t mess around. “I got the Michelin Guide and cold-called all the top restaurants, starting with the Fat Duck and Gordon Ramsay, and they became my first two clients. That encouraged me so I called every single restaurant in the book. Many sommeliers were French, or were predisposed towards French wines, but being good sommeliers they loved exceptional wines. I don’t want to say it was an easy sell but I had something that got them excited.”

Ellmann had not intended to make a career in wine. Raised in Cologne in Germany, after completing a university degree in business and economics, she came to England to visit an Englishman she had met on a skiing holiday in Austria and stayed. Her first job was in a marketing agency but it bothered her that so much of the German wine she saw in Britain – the big, sweetish brands – “had nothing to do with the wines that I grew up with or the wines that Germans were drinking on a daily basis at home. I felt it was such a misrepresented style.”

After building a company that has won many awards and been described (by no less a figure than Steven Spurrier) as the “jewel in the crown of German wine merchants”, Ellmann has now been forced to make another pivot. Given that around 70 per cent of the Wine Barn’s business is to hotels and restaurants – all of them currently closed – she is now putting more emphasis on sales that go direct to the public. “I don’t need to convert the converted. I want to convert the other ones who are just looking for new, thirst-quenching wines that will keep them interested. I always recommend wines so that you don’t get bored after the first or second glass.”

In the two decades since the Wine Barn’s inception, our appreciation of German wine has changed. Where once we saw a sea of liebfraumilch now we see 13 distinct wine-growing regions, each of them making wine defined not just by its grape variety or level of dryness but also by a personality of its own. We’ve woken up to the brilliance not just of still riesling, whose acidity gleams like rays of sunlight, but also of sekt, a sparkling wine that dances with zesty aromatics.

The Arh wine valley in Germany
Credit: The Wine Barn

It is not only perceptions that have evolved. So, too, has the German wine landscape, and in a big way, benefiting from the same factor that has enabled a nascent English wine industry – global warming.

“Climate change has transformed German viticulture and today more than a third of its hectarage is planted to red grape varieties. With 11,767 hectares of pinot noir (aka Spätburgunder) Germany is now the world’s third largest producer of this variety – a remarkable success story and a fascinating addition to the world’s pinot pantheon,” writes Anne Krebiehl in the introduction to her excellent and incisive book The Wines of Germany, published last year.

Indeed. The rise of spätburgunder has been one of the big trends in both fine and in German wine over the last few years, with burgundy lovers who have been priced out of the market, or who want to explore another pinot.

However, it’s a more “give me a decent bottle for the fridge” crowd that Ellmann now hopes to reach. She sends me three bottles which she says are among her favourite three at the moment. I am particularly taken by a dry riesling from Württemberg, a region in south-west Germany whose wines are mostly drunk on the domestic market. It’s Weingut Aldinger Rebhuhn Riesling Trocken 2018 (Germany, 11.5%, thewinebarn.co.uk, £13.05). It has a calm, glacial feel, creamy and smooth, and tingles on the tongue like Bramley apples with lime juice. OK, there is the tiniest smear of sugar, but this builds succulence and body rather than sweetness.

From Baden there’s a Grauburgunder – a pinot gris, which does not taste like a pinot gris from anywhere else. Heger Grauburgunder Sonett 2018 (Germany, 13.5%, thewinebarn.co.uk, £15.85) is dry and has a scent of hedgerows – bitter hawthorn and soft white blossom with a raw squeeze of a lemon juice finish.

Finally a mid-coloured rosé, Meyer-Näkel Rosé Spätburgunder 2018 (Ahr, Germany (12%, thewinebarn.co.uk, £16.90) is not in any way a Provence rosé wannabe. Made with pinot noir, it comes with a crunch of red cherries and strawberries, but it also tastes northerly. Ellmann says she would describe the wines as, “elegant and pure, crystal clear.” I think there is a clarity that might appeal to those who like wines from New Zealand, although the flavours are more aromatic than pungent.

I ask Ellmann if she feels that, in general, language and confusion around sweetness levels are still barriers. A long and somewhat frosty silence ensues. Eventually she says: “I don’t think that’s the case anymore, Victoria. I haven’t had a single comment about labels for the last five years. Or the sweetness of the wines.”

So I’ll leave you to browse her portfolio, which includes a Stay Home Stay Safe case (12 bottles for £220.40), among which is a riesling from the superb producer Bassermann-Jordan. And let me know how you get on.

Wines of the week

Three wines for tight budgets this week. Aldi has some very good inexpensive Italian white wines this season: look out for the lemony pecorino, the cattaratto and also this Sicilian fiano which has hints of orange and tropical fruit.

M&S This is…Rich & Smooth Spanish Red 2019, Spain

(12%, M&S, £5)

Bent on persuading shoppers that it can also cater to those looking for everyday basics, M&S has just launched a new range of fifteen sub-£6 wines. This one is indeed rich and smooth - perfectly drinkable, with flavours of baked strawberries with stewed plums.

It’s nonsense that you can’t get good cheap red bordeaux. For the price, this is a good wine by any measure: a remarkably true claret that carries a definite sense of place, a touch of dust and graphite.